


strangers and wanderers

by bookhobbit



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: 100 Years Later, Holding Hands, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 01:19:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15304254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhobbit/pseuds/bookhobbit
Summary: Strange and Mr Norrell discover a way to break the curse and return home. At least, for a given and imprecise value of 'home'.





	1. In which Strange & Norrell make a Discovery

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Into Vain Citadels](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4367810) by [gyabou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyabou/pseuds/gyabou). 



> This is not directly derivative of Strange Meeting and none of the events are the same. However, given how AMAZING and ICONIC Strange Meeting is, and given the premise is still "Strange and Norrell pop out of the darkness 100 years later," it only seems right to say that this fic is inspired by it. Anyway, I started this last September, abandoned it, found it again, and finished it all in a weekend, as one does.
> 
> Broken into two chapters for easier reading, for once!

It was midnight.

Here in the Eternal Darkness, it was always midnight. Consequently, heedless of the hour, Jonathan Strange was reading a book. He had just made a rather important discovery in it.

Strange yelled for Mr Norrell, and received no response.

This was not at all unusual in their lives nowadays. The annoyance of going in and out to enter their various houses for things they needed was such a dreadful inconvenience that they had modified the labyrinth in Hurtfew. Its various doors off the corridor to the library now led to the front rooms of Ashfair, the house in Hanover Square, and Strange's house in London.

The resulting profusion of rooms was convenient, except when you wanted to find someone.

Strange employed his usual solution to this dilemma: he cast a scrying spell and divided the quarters into the four houses, then the relevant house into four sections.

Mr Norrell was, Strange discovered, asleep in Hurtfew.

Upon consideration, Strange recalled that he himself had been trying to sleep when he had made his discovery. The inaccuracy of clocks had only exacerbated his own tendency to lose track of the hour.

He hurried into Ashfair's front room and through to Hurtfew Abbey, still contemplating what he had found.

Mr Norrell was not pleased about being awoken. "It's always midnight anyway," said Strange carelessly, sitting down on the bed, ignoring Mr Norrell's nervous scrabble away from him. "Look at this."

Mr Norrell reached over and settled his reading glasses on his face. "Oh. Yes, the Tale of the Fairy Gold. He placed a ten-year curse on the Raven King, but the Raven King got round it by putting the clock hands round 7300 times and asking the sun to lie for him. I've always suspected it was apocryphal, not least because the clocks even at the end of John Uskglass's reign were not really accurate enough to--"

Strange waved a hand. "It's the principle I'm thinking of. Do you think it's sound?"

"Oh, I don't know. I haven't ever seen a spell for it."

Strange flourished the other book he was holding triumphantly. "Look at this. It's a bit of nursery rhyme, but I think there's something in there. It's about the sacrifice of time--making the clock go faster, as it were. It references the original story, but obliquely, and the spell would be similar in form to--ah, what's the one, the one for making crops grow quicker?"

"Song of Ceres, it's called in later texts," said Mr Norrell, clearly interested despite himself. "A most fanciful name, but a well-attested spell."

"Yes, that's the one. You sacrifice one thing, don't you, to bring forth the larger effect? An apple, say, for a field of wheat?"

"Yes, that's right. It's a head of wheat, not an apple--like for like."

Strange took a deep breath. "We were discussing the auspiciousness of hundredth anniversaries. "Could we trick the spell into thinking it'd been 100 years?"

"Spells aren't sentient," said Mr Norrell sternly. "You cannot _trick_ them into anything."

Strange sighed. "It was only a manner of speaking, Mr Norrell."

"A magician must be precise in his speech. If you'll recall, it was an insufficiently precise manner of speaking which led to my present situation. Not, of course, that I should have wished for you to be alone in the Darkness, but..."

"Mr Norrell, please. Is it possible?"

"It depends on the procedure you were thinking," said Mr Norrell. "A sacrifice of time for more time?"

"One day for a hundred years?"

"I don't know," said Mr Norrell. "I would have to do more research."

"Well, come, then," said Strange, tugging his arm. Mr Norrell flinched, and Strange let go, but stood up, clapping his hands together.

"I wanted to sleep," said Mr Norrell reproachfully.

"You can do that," said Strange, "when we break the curse."

 

Of course it wasn't really so quick as that. Strange had many enthusiasms and ideas for escape, most of which died off when they failed to work.

This time, though, bit by bit, they built a plan. One day Mr Norrell thought would be insufficient, so they sacrificed a year. That year would go by in an instant, and it would never be theirs again, but since they had already passed many years here, it seemed a small sacrifice. For some weeks, they worked on setting up the spell. Finally, almost two months after Strange had burst into Norrell's room, they were ready.

The two magicians stood at opposite ends of the little table at which they did magic.

"It could go very badly," said Mr Norrell.

"Think of what we could gain," said Strange. He smiled at Mr Norrell, who looked a little flustered and fidgeted.

"If we are freed," he said, "you will not forget our friendship, will you?"

Strange looked surprised. "Of course not. After all this time, I don't think I would be able to. We have been through something no one else can understand, after all."

Mr Norrell nodded.

Everything needed for the spell was on the table. Some pages from a calendar they hadn't used in some time, the smallest clock in Strange's London house, a flower to signify the passage of the seasons. The words had included a great many exhortations to pagan gods and goddesses, which Mr Norrell, in his general dislike of florilegia, had removed. It was only a few lines, now.

They held a candle in their clasped hands, and began to recite the spell.

A wind seemed to sweep through the room without disturbing anything, and yet it swept not just through the air but through the magicians' very bones. They were frozen, unable to move, as the shadows seemed to flicker wildly and, outside, the trees of Faerie grew taller before their very eyes. The phantom wind rushed upward and then back down in directions no wind had ever gone, and suddenly, as the candle guttered out in their hands, the room returned to normal.

The Darkness rolled back. The effect was something like stormclouds clearing and something like, had Strange and Mr Norrell known it, a solar eclipse receding.

For the first time in many years, the two magicians saw the sun shining through their window.

"I didn't think it would work," said Mr Norrell.

Strange stretched out a hand and let a sunbeam fall on it. He laughed softly in delight, and flung the window open.

"Let's go back to England," he said.

Transportation was easy to accomplish; they landed Hurtfew Abbey in its usual location with very little fuss. Mr Norrell said everything looked different, that the trees had grown up a good deal, but Strange said that was only natural when it had been five years.

They got into a debate, as they always did, about how long it had been since they had entered the darkness. Strange insisted that he had kept careful track and that it had been only five years, not more; Mr Norrell insisted that it had been at least seven.

"We'll settle this," said Strange. "Let's go through your house on Hanover-Square and find a newspaper or someone to ask."

 

It was raining in London -- of course. Mr Norrell poked his head out and said, softly, "Good English rain."

Strange smiled, and stepped out of the house without pausing to put his coat on. The ever-present smell of London hit him, though it seemed different than usual, somehow. Probably the effects of having been in Faerie for so long--where cities often smelled of blood and dead things, but rarely of humanity. He shook his head.

Women's dress, he noted as the people streamed down the street, had certainly changed... Far more than he would have expected in the time period, but then he had never paid very much attention to it. Were the buildings different? Surely that couldn't be right. He frowned.

"Are you sure, Mr Norrell, that we are in England?"

Mr Norrell said, "Of course I'm sure! Where else would we be?"

"I don't know..."

Mr Norrell stepped out with Strange. At that moment, some sort of contraption, shaped like a kind of low, self-powered carriage, rushed by them at high speed, making a noise like nothing Strange had ever heard before. Mr Norrell shrank back into the doorway, twisting his hands in terror.

"What the devil," said Strange, staring after it in astonishment.

"This must be England," Mr Norrell repeated. "There isn't any London anywhere else. This _is_ London, I suppose. It looks like London."

"Perhaps it's Hell."

Mr Norrell gave this due consideration. "I would not be surprised to find an imitation of London in Hell," he said, "and certainly that contrivance that passed us just now was devilish. All the same, I don't think that's the solution. The trees at Hurtfew were too tall, Mr Strange."

Strange stared at him, the meaning of his words beginning to dawn.

"Gain one hundred years, the spell said." Mr Norrell looked around himself, out at the London that wasn't quite exactly as they knew. "I suspect that we have done just that. If you can find a newspaper, I think you will find the year is 1917."

 

They found a newspaper, though they had to walk for some time in the familiar and yet bizarrely alien streets to do so.

"February," said Mr Norrell. "That would explain the inclement weather--" there was a cutting chill in the air, and Mr Norrell had insisted on bundling himself up well before they left the house--"and the year would explain the...er....changes. It was a very precise effect, I see."

"We've traveled through time, by magic? I thought you said that was impossible."

"To the best of my knowledge," said Mr Norrell irritably, "Nobody had ever done it before. No doubt the power of the fairy's curse assisted. Fairies, as you know, do not experience time as we do. It may even be that as soon as the curse was ended, we would inevitably emerge a hundred years after it had started. Many tales, distorted though they are, tell of people who entered Faerie and spent what they perceived as a short time there, then later came out to find themselves some decades distant from their original time. I think you'll find in T--"

"How do we get back?" demanded Strange, cutting off Mr Norrell's lecture.

"I don't think we can. At least, there's no record of that ever happening."

"We can't stay here!" said Strange, grabbing onto Mr Norrell's arm. "We broke the spell so that we could go back home! This is not home!"

Mr Norrell glanced around them. "Mr Strange," he said, "I think that we should return to the house. We're attracting attention."

Strangely-dressed as they were, and loud as Strange was being, more than one person had stopped to stare. Mr Norrell took hold of Strange firmly and towed him back to Hanover Square, glancing around himself every few minutes.

As more and more people stared, he said, feebly, "We are actors." Actors, in Mr Norrell's opinion, got up to all sorts of strange, outlandish, and completely inexplicable things; surely, that wouldn't have changed so much in a hundred years.

The house on Hanover Square had its own share of watchers by the time they got back. Strange was silent, still seemingly stunned, so Mr Norrell had to push through a crowd of people whispering about why an entire house had suddenly appeared in an area of the square that had been rumored to be cursed, haunted, or both for decades. He wasn't a tall man nor one with aggressive elbows, so it took some time.

Finally, he got himself and Strange back into the house and locked the door firmly.

"Well," he said. "If we were hoping for an inconspicuous arrival, it seems that we have failed."

Strange laughed, with a worrying edge of hysteria. "Oh," he said. "We've arrived in London a hundred years from where we started, after having been in Faerie for five years, without the knowledge of a single soul, all our kith and kin dead, bringing four houses inclined to wander and a library that has now probably reached mythical in its reputation. God forbid we be _conspicuous_."

Mr Norrell frowned. Strange's face had gone very white, and his eyes very wild; it was a mood Mr Norrell had not seen him in for six and a half years. After some consideration about how best to deal with a Strange who might tip over into real hysteria at any moment, he went to the kitchen and made a cup of tea.

"Oh, good," said Strange faintly, when he received it. "Tea repairs all ills, does it?"

"Drink it."

Strange drank. By the time they had both finished, he looked calmer, though no less pale.

"We need to get back," he said when he put the cup down. "We _must_ get back."

"In the long term, I agree it would be desirable to search for a solution," said Mr Norrell, "But in the short term, we had best focus on the practicalities of our situation."

"Heaven forbid _you_ focus on a practicality," said Strange. "What practicalities are these?"

"Where we are, and how we will be received. When I say where we are, I refer not to our geographical location, but to our place in this time."

Strange rubbed his head. "I understand, I think."

"I need you to remain calm," said Mr Norrell firmly, "because I need you for this. You know I'm not skilled at conversation or negotiation. Men of the world like to be talked to other men of the world, I have learned that well. I am not one--you are."

Strange ran a hand down his face and sighed. "Very well. I'll try, if only for the sake of being able to buy food when our supplies run out. What shall we do?"

There was a knock at the door.

Strange raised his eyebrows, and answered it. A sort of constable greeted them, looking rather sheepish.

"Good morning to you gentlemen," he said, peering at Strange and then behind him towards Mr Norrell. "How do you do?"

"We could be better," said Strange. "What may we do for you?"

"People were wondering--er, that is to say, a house suddenly appeared here, and as you gentlemen probably know, no house has been able to be built here for a hundred years, and er--are you filming a motion picture?"

"A what?" said Strange.

"A motion picture, sir."

"No, we're not...whatever that is." Strange grinned a wide, dangerous grin, the one that always made Mr Norrell tremble a little knowing that it betokened some act of mischief or great risk. "To be precise, we came here from Faerie. We've traveled a hundred years in time."

 

It's a good rule for surviving in society not to tell policemen something he's likely to interpret as deliberately wasting his time. Strange, however, had technically never interacted with police officers as such, and was besides that disinclined to listen to any rule that didn't suit him.

In consequence, it took some time for the ensuing snarl of offended bureaucracy and misunderstanding to get sorted. Once it had, the policeman referred Strange and Mr Norrell to the head of the Department of Magical Regulation, who called in two historians and an expert on misuse of magic, who put Strange and Mr Norrell into one of the horrible automobiles (as they seemed to be called) and took them across town to his office and made them answer an uncomfortable number of questions.

Once they were finished, though, the expert on misuse of magic contacted the head of the Department of Magical Regulation on a bizarre device which he explained was a telephone and said that Strange and Mr Norrell were who they said they were.

"I suppose," he said to the two magicians, evidently bewildered, "we have no grounds to keep you here. You can go back home. I'll have one of my men drive you back to Hanover Square."

And so it was that Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell, back in England for the first time in a hundred years, returned home.

They made a cup of tea, and had some supper. They cleared the dishes, and Strange washed them while Mr Norrell dried and arranged them on the shelves.

Then they sat down.

They looked at each other.

"What do we do now?" said Strange.

 

The few weeks following their arrival always appeared in Mr Norrell's memory as a confused blur of overstimulation and panic. Their first step was to ascertain how much money they had. The push-pull forces of inflation and investment had left the two of them with enough to survive on for some time. It took a considerable amount of convincing for their banks to accept that they were themselves, but the overexcited newspaper articles about their return helped. Taxation was a tangle that would have to be sorted out, but not by them and not right this moment.

They put Mr Norrell's house in Hanover Square, which he had never felt truly his home, up for sale. Strange's London house had been let originally, and the debate over who owned it raged for some time. They took a flat, which had more modern conveniences in it than either of them could puzzle out, and linked the bedroom doors to Hurtfew Abbey and Ashfair so they could return to blessed simplicity when it all became too much.

They bought new clothes, which fit them uncomfortably and were made of foreign materials. Strange adopted the new fashions readily, not wanting to look antiquated, but Mr Norrell took some convincing.

"You'll stand out," Strange said. "Everyone will know it's you, and they'll mob you. You know you would hate that."

"But I don't like how these feel," said Mr Norrell plaintively. "They are wrong. And what about my wig?"

"Your wig has been out of fashion for ten years anyway," said Strange.

"I don't care about fashions. I care about comfort."

"You'll be more comfortable if you're less conspicuous," Strange pointed out. Mr Norrell couldn't argue with this, and, with much more complaining, wore his new clothes any time they left the house.

Slowly, week by week, they found their footing.

They had not got properly settled yet, nor had they allowed a great many visitors, when William Wood came.

He came in what was shaping up to be a fine March; he came into their flat, perched on their sofa, drank their tea, and introduced himself as the Chancellor of Magic.

"It would be remiss of me not to visit the nation's two greatest magicians," he said, smiling a thin smile.

"We are honored," said Strange politely. Mr Norrell, silent and suspicious, only peered at him.

"Is there anything that we can do to help you transition more easily into our present time?" said William Wood. "The nation is, of course, in difficult position right now with the war, but we will do our best."

"We're doing quite well on our own," said Strange. "Perhaps you have a request to make of us?"

William Wood smiled again. "It depends on what you want to volunteer. We know your record, of course, Mr Strange. Perhaps you'd be willing to serve your country again? Not yet, of course, but once you're comfortable here, you may want something to do."

Beside him, Mr Norrell gave a violent start.

Strange said, "I am not sure what use I could be to you. No doubt you have large squadrons of battle-magicians with far more up-to-date knowledge of their field than I have."

"Certainly," said William Wood, "but none of them have your reputation. You are the cofounder of modern English magic! The psychological advantages would be immense."

"I see," said Strange, thinking the concept of being a sort of mascot was not particularly appealing.

"Besides," added William Wod, "You and Mr. Norrell have a greater knowledge of Faerie than any modern magician could possibly pretend to claim."

Mr Norrell started again; Strange leaned forward a little. "Do you use fairy magic in the war?"

"Well, not officially and not yet. No doubt with your aid, though--"

"I'm not sure I'm interested in involving myself in another war, sir," said Strange carefully.

"I'll give you time to think on it, shall I? Of course, we never intended you to begin immediately. You're still finding your way around this new time. I'll return to speak to you in a few weeks or so."

Strange gave a thin smile and stood to escort their visitor out the door.

"He didn't wait long, did he," he said, as soon as he returned to what Mr Norrell still called the parlour. "We've hardly spoken to anyone here."

"You can't go," said Mr Norrell immediately, ignoring these practicalities.

Strange, despite the fact that he hadn't been intending to, arched an eyebrow. "You aren't my teacher anymore, you know. And that didn't even work last time."

"You _can't_ ," said Mr Norrell. "I can't be without you again. It was intolerable last time. It would be much worse here when I don't know anyone."

Strange blinked. "I was serving my country."

"I didn't mean _then_ . That was quite dreadful, too, of course. You could have died and then English magic would have lost its only other practical magician of any value whatsoever, and then where would we have been? No, I was referring to our schism, which was much more difficult. I couldn't even write to you. There was no one to _talk_ to, except Childermass." Mr Norrell capped this unusually long unacademic speech with the enigmatic pronouncement, "But Childermass is Childermass."

Strange sat down slowly next to Mr Norrell. "You didn't do anything to repair it."

Mr Norrell frowned. "Neither did you. But that is not the issue at hand. Did you not find it terrible, to be so isolated -- a magician alone, as it were?"

"As a matter of fact, I did."

"It would be the same again, only worse. Mr Strange, we are men out of our time. It would be foolish to separate now, when we really are alone."

Strange ran a hand through his hair, adding an unnecessary extra degree of musedness to what was already a fine tangle. "There is something in what you say, Mr Norrell."

Mr Norrell peered at Strange, then narrowed his eyes. "You weren't going to go at all. You were teasing me."

"No--no. I wanted to hear your arguments I wasn't really decided in my own mind..." Strange flashed a sheepish look at Mr Norrell. "Besides, you should know better than to order me to do anything."

"Really, Mr Strange, you're one of the most contrary men I have ever known."

Strange grinned. "Not counting yourself, I suppose."

Mr Norrell sniffed in derision. "The question remains what you're going to do. What will you tell Mr Waters, when he returns?"

"I don't know. I don't want to go back -- I've had my fill. Patriotism is all very well, but two wars were enough. All the same, I don't think he'll take that for an answer."

"I don't feel easy in my mind about him," said Mr Norrell. "Nor about his interest in fairies."

"Oh, that. Yes, I do think that's something of a...warning message. Fairies oughtn't be involved in Christian wars."

"No indeed."

There was a silence.

Into it, Strange murmured, "Dear God, what will they do with us now?"

"A more apt question is what we shall do with ourselves," said Mr Norrell, clearly taking this as requiring an answer. Strange had meant it as a rhetorical question, in remembrance of the one he'd asked at the end of the war, but he did not correct Mr Norrell's presumption.

"I could ask that question with equal justification," he said. "What is there to do? We are, as you say, men out of our time."

"I am old," said Mr Norrell. "I do not want to do anything except return to my library and continue studying my books. Perhaps it would be nice to acquire new books, and see what our descendants have discovered, and perhaps even to publish a paper or two."

Strange thought, uncharitably, that this would be more than Mr Norrell, with his endless habit of revising and revising, had ever managed before.

"But as for adventures," continued Mr Norrell, leaning back and closing his eyes, "I'm quite finished with them."

"Men out of our time," said Strange thoughtfully. "Perhaps what we ought to do is try to return to it."

Mr Norrell sat up and looked at Strange. "I know I said earlier that such a course of action would be desirable in the long run, but I do not think so anymore. I suspect it's impossible, and I'm certain it's unwise."

"Why? We'd only be restoring things to their proper places. Inertia, didn't you say once? Things want to be where or what they were before."

"That's a very simplified way of putting it--"

"Yes, yes, yes, but isn't traveling back to your original timeline easier than traveling forward?" Strange leaned in closer to Norrell, who leaned back slightly in response. "We'd only have to reverse what we'd done."

"Thereby leaving us back in our prison."

"No, no. We wouldn't reverse the timeline, only our position in it."

"I don't think that journeying through time can possibly be as linear as you make it out to be," said Mr Norrell. "We are here now; we would have to overcome the inertia of our present position to move. That would require considerable sacrifice."

"Sacrifice," said Strange softly. "Well. We have enough to give, don't we?"

"I would strongly advise you to forget it." Mr Norrell looked at Strange for a moment, then let his eyes fall back to their usual position somewhere over his shoulder. "Concentrate on the future, Mr Strange, and not the past. It is better that way."

Strange didn't contradict him. He made no promises, either.

 

For the next three days or so, Strange moped around the flat while Mr Norrell attempted to set up some kind of order in it. They had only finished moving what they considered the essentials, and the flat was still in dreadful disorder.

It irked him to see Strange lolling around while he worked. On the third day, he said, "We should find out what we can about this time, shouldn't we?"

Strange emerged from the fog. "How do you propose to do that?"

"We might go to the library."

"Which one?"

Mr Norrell, who had prepared for this by purchasing a city guide on their last trip out, flourished it silently.

They chose a large library built some fifty years ago and dedicated to books of and about magic. The trip required them to take the alarmingly-crowded omnibus, a now-familiar trial which was still less frightening than the horror of modern hansom cabs, which weren't proper cabs at all. Mr Norrell clung silently to Strange's arm through the trip, terrified that they would be separated by the push and bustle of the crowd.

"I give them credit," said Strange. "They certainly have come up with some innovative solutions in the time we've been gone, haven't they? Horseless transportation."

"I don't like it," said Mr Norrell.

"I can't say it's to my particular taste either, but it's creative."

"I'm afraid I will fall over."

Strange patted Mr Norrell on the back briskly, which made him squirm a little. "Come on, this is our stop."

 

It was a good library. In fact, it was rather larger than Mr Norrell's own, which caused him some slight disgruntlement. But then, most of them weren't books of magic, not in the sense that Mr Norrell's were. There were a great number of biographies, and a huge quantity of texts produced in the flourishing of magic after he and Strange and left England.

The two of them split up, with an agreement to return, and wandered. Mr Norrell found a shelf that looked promising and began to examine it briskly, looking for anything of interest. This seemed to be largely a collection of biographies and references to magical figures. He skimmed over the Aureates and Argentines -- little likely to be new to him there, though he'd come back later and see -- and over, later, to the section marked _Post-Revival_.

Mr Norrell's fingers landed on a book titled _An Encyclopaedia of Magicians of the Nineteenth Century_.

He narrowed his eyes, immediately remembering the York Society and wondering if they had kept their side of the bargain after his presumed death. Harrumphing to himself, Mr Norrell flipped through the book with slightly less than his usual care, looking for the Fs. For it was, he thought, Foxcastle that would be most likely of all of them to go back on his promise once Norrell had gone.

At the Cs, though, he stopped dead, arrested by the sight of a familiar name.

_CHILDERMASS, John. Born 1771?, unknown location in Yorkshire, died 1843, Starecross Village, Yorkshire. English magician of the Revival Period. The early life of John Childermass is almost entirely unknown. From letters we know his probable birth day, year, and county. Little else about him can be stated with certainty until 1817, when he enters the public record. Rising to the public's notice as the servant of Gilbert Norrell, he later became one of the leading figures of the Revival. Childermass was the first Reader of the King's New Book and contributed significantly to our understanding of the text. He was also instrumental in shaping the current incarnation of English magical law. Childermass taught magic, particularly divination, at fellow Revivalist John Segundus's school, from 1819-1832. His famous statement of his relationship to the two schools of magic--that he was neither a Strangeite nor a Norrellite, but to some degree both--is clearly demonstrated in his approach to his efforts towards a regulatory scheme of magic and in what we know of his pedagogy. After he retired, he edited several publications on magical theory and magical law, including--_

Mr Norrell closed the book with a thump, Foxcastles and York Societies forgotten. After a moment, he looked again. To see how it ended.

The final sentence: _John Childermass is buried in the Magicians' Corner of Westminster Abbey. His gravestone stands next to Norrell's side of the Revival Memorial._

He closed the book again, more carefully. Then he closed his eyes and hid his face for a long time, until he recovered.

Taking a deep breath, Mr Norrell looked up _Revival Memorial_ . This, said the book, was _a stele of obsidian erected for Strange and Norrell in Westminster Abbey after they were presumed dead in 1825. It commemorates the curse of eternal darkness the magicians were said to labor under. The right side is inscribed with Strange's face, and the left with Norrell's, working off the 1814 portrait_.

He harrumphed to himself, put the book back on the shelf, and found Strange several shelves down.

"There is a memorial to us in Westminster Abbey," he said. "We're presumed dead."

Strange put his book down. "I imagine we must hold the record for longest time being presumed dead before being found to be alive."

"That is not what I hoped my legacy would be."

"No, nor mine, but you can't argue that it got us memorialized in Westminster Abbey. How did you find out about this?"

"Childermass is there," said Mr Norrell abruptly, and sat down. He pulled one of Strange's books towards him without checking the title. Upon opening it, to his dismay, he found that it was a novel.

"What is _this_?" he asked.

"You found Childermass? Was he in a book?"

"Is this some sort of love story? How appalling. Why did you choose it?"

"Don't ignore me, Mr Norrell."

Mr Norrell made a sour face. "He was. I found the entry in a dictionary of magicians. I don't want to discuss it."

Strange shrugged. "I thought the story looked interesting."

"It has vampires in it."

"Yes, I know, isn't it fascinating? It incorporates completely ridiculous theories of magic into the concept of the undead."

"There's no such thing as vampires."

"I know, but you absolutely must see the justification the author uses. It's delightful." Strange took the book and began flipping through it.

"Don't show me, you'll only make me angry."

Strange put the book down and tilted his head. "Has your discovery upset you?"

"I told you I don't want to talk about it."

"Arabella," said Strange gently, "is in Shropshire. In the churchyard her father preached at."

Mr Norrell sat stiffly.

"We didn't leave them intentionally," Strange continued. "We may yet find them again. Try not to dwell on their graves. I thought Arabella was dead once -- but she was only dreaming, and I stole her back. If I have to again, I will."

Without meeting Strange's eye, Mr Norrell took up the novel about vampires and began to castigate it again. Strange joined him, but there was an undercurrent of tension between them that had not faded.

 

They investigated much more that day. They found the names of some of the most prominent Strangeite and Norrellite magicians who had followed in their footsteps.

"I can't say that I have a high opinion of most of these," said Mr Norrell, running his eye down a list dubiously. "I never intended for my principles to be used by other people."

"You never intended magic to be used by other people," Strange said.

"That's not true at all. After my death--but I intended to write some sort of guide before that time. And of course you would have been there to carry on my legacy."

"Death takes us all in forms that we don't expect," said Strange dryly, flipping through _A Comprehensive Examination of the Strangeite and Norrellite Positions_. "Did you know that your followers hold first tenant to be that magic must be learned from books?"

"Hmmm," said Mr Norrell, looking not at all displeased. "What are the others?"

"There seems to be a considerable amount of debate, but--" Strange began to read:

" _The fundamental principles of Norrellism can best be described as the following five foundational arguments, which most Norrelites would agree upon as true, even if they disagreed on the importance and the order. It may be noted that these should be considered in relationship to Strangeism, rather than as absolute statements._

_First, books of magic must be the primary source of magical education._

_Second, the use of magic should be regulated by the government. Some common propositions in this area include the idea that magicians must be licensed to practice, and the creation of government-funded schools with approved curricula._

_Third, human magic should remain in the domain of humans alone. Some Norrellites go so far as to claim that fairies do not exist, while others claim they are beings of pure evil, and still others simply claim that we should not use them for magic, but instead allow them to live their own lives in their own realm._

_Fourth, the legacy of the Raven King should not be overstated in magic. The degree to which various Norrellites consider 'overstated' to apply--and what the actual legacy of the Raven King was--is highly controversial._

_Fifth and finally, magic should above all be approached with caution, respect, and an awareness of the risks inherent in its practice._ "

"I never said that fairies should never be used in Christian magic," said Mr Norrell.

"No, indeed," said Strange, casting him a significant glance. "Nevertheless, that is the impression you tried to convey while all the time having employed fairy-magic in the first place."

"As I recall, what I told you was that their use must be as minimal as possible and that we must exercise the utmost caution in our dealings with them." Mr Norrell frowned. "I don't think most of these principles are the ones I would have chosen, had I been asked to write the central arguments of my approach to magic."

"Well, let's have the Strangeite approach, then," said Strange. He read:

" _The five fundamental principles of Strangeism are equally controversial, but run roughly as follows. Again, these should be understood as in contrast to Norrellism rather than as absolute statements._

_First, the primary source of magical education should be practice and apprenticeship to an experienced magician._

_Second, that the government should not be involved in magical practice; that schools of magic, apprenticeship programs, and regulatory standards should be developed by private individuals._

_Third, that fairies are a natural source of magic which magicians must make use of if they wish to fully develop English magic. Again, make use of is a statement into which much debate has been poured._

_Fourth, that the Raven King is the foundation of all English magic, and that it is his legacy that magicians must continue._

_Fifth, that magic is above all an art form, and that its use should take into account aesthetic concerns and delights before all else._ "

"I dare say," said Mr Norrell when Strange had stopped reading, "that those are not the principles you would have codified had you been given the chance, either."

"No," said Strange. "Certainly some of them seem to be to be sensible, but..." He trailed off. "I suppose we should have expected that our legacy had gone beyond us."

"Very probably, it went beyond us the moment we went into the Darkness and were no longer there to regulate it," said Mr Norrell.

"Perhaps even before that," said Strange. "Perhaps it went beyond us as soon as we began to teach it--you to me, and me to my students. Perhaps none of us can be in control of our own world-views once we begin to pass them on to other people."

Mr Norrell said, reproachfully, "You are philosophizing, Mr Strange."

Strange laughed. "I'm afraid I am. Is this a lending library? Let's take some of these back to the flat."

 

The books Strange had brought back were all on the subject of magic and time. Mr Norrell, skimming them in an immense hurry during one of Strange's naps, had found nothing helpful. This was not to say that Strange wouldn't, given enough time and energy. That was, after all, what had put them in 1917 in the first place.

Mr Norrell had deliberately avoided bringing home the dictionary, and the novel too. His own choices were on current magical theory, and he wasn't finding them very compelling. Thoroughly nonsensical views of fairy-magic, everywhere you looked, had no one these days met a fairy? Mr Wood, he recalled, had said that they were not yet officially using fairy magic in the war. This suggested an unofficial element, certainly.

He went flipping through a review of magical law from 1700-1900, which made him think of Childermass too. Childermass had always been particularly good at magical law. Resolutely ignoring this thought, he looked for fairy magic in the index.

The use of fairy aid in English magic had, it seemed, been banned not very long after he and Strange had disappeared. In fact, it seemed that their own case had been held up as one of the reasons why fairy magic was far too dangerous for anyone to use. This argument Mr Norrell could not find fault with.To his surprise, he found that Lady Pole had been instrumental in the movement to make fairy magic illegal. Peculiar after it had saved her life, but then, perhaps she had found conditions there uncongenial.

He read on. The use of magic in wartime had now been regulated very greatly. Reviving the dead was not allowed -- just as well -- and nor was any kind of summoning of spirits. Mr Norrell wondered what William Wood intended to say to these regulations if he wanted Strange's knowledge of Faerie.

Mr Norrell put the book aside, and stared for a moment at Strange. He had collapsed on the sopha after a bout of research. Though Mr Norrell had told him to go properly to bed, Strange had simply draped his long limbs over as much of the sopha as possible, and gone immediately to sleep.

His face was very peaceful, though not quite still. There was something so very mercurial and so very animated about Jonathan Strange, that even in sleep, as he dreamed, small movements passed across his face. Mr Norrell imagined that Strange was having an argument with him in a dream, or perhaps testing some new theory. Or perhaps--

Mr Norrell shook his head. He ought to go back to reading. But it was difficult, not to be distracted. When Strange was awake, Mr Norrell rarely permitted himself to look very long at his face without some very good excuse to do so. He was terribly afraid that his feelings would show on his own face.

Looking at Strange, he was seized with a great and ardent knowledge that he must _not_ lose him again. They could stay here, they could go back to their own time, they could move forward into the unthinkably futuristic year of 2017, and Mr Norrell would not mind. Not any more than he minded the Darkness, which had been, in its own way, a solace. Not if Strange was there with him.

He rubbed his eyes and took his spectacles off, for he was sure further no reading would be done. In his heart, there was a tender place, a longing, a wish to lay down beside Strange on the sopha, though there was scarcely room for both of them. He wanted to look at Strange's face for as long as he liked and even be looked at in return, he wanted to touch Strange's hands without the requirement of excuse.

Mr Norrell crept along to his own bedroom, undressed, and lay in the bed, wishing dearly that he was not alone in it. It seemed entirely unfair that all his life he had hated to be touched and avoided it at every opportunity, and now he craved it, but could not have it.

He did not want to return to 1817, or whatever year it would be by the time they got back. 1824, he thought, but then magic was uncertain. In 1824 Arabella Strange would be alive.

Childermass would be alive, as well, but Mr Norrell had the sense that Childermass had done quite well without Mr Norrell's intervention. He had become a great magician. Mr Norrell had half-consciously known the potential was there, of course; however, Childermass had always been on _his_ side, and therefore nonthreatening. At least, until the very end. Mr Norrell wished he could told Childermass that the very end had been a mistake, but then, he thought, perhaps Childermass would not like to hear him.

No, he thought: we cannot go back. We cannot go and undo what has already been done. If they went back, the time that they were in now would collapse, and change, and that could not be allowed to happen. It was untidy.

In 1824 Arabella Strange would be alive.

What, Mr Norrell asked himself sternly, did he believe would happen in this time, with Arabella Strange dead? Did he believe Strange would become so lonely and desperate for company that he would turn to Mr Norrell? There were women here, after all. Mr Norrell was not comely, and moreover Strange had always been fond of the society of women. In a way, it was worse here: Mr Norrell _couldn't_ speak of his feelings, even if he had wanted to, because they were alone together, and he could not risk alienating Strange.

Nevertheless...they could not leave. He was certain of that. They could not leave.


	2. In which Strange & Norrell have a Revelation

Mr Norrell did not enjoying going out to fetch the paper.

They could have had it delivered, but it was only rarely that either of them read it. Every so often, Strange would take a fancy to see where the war was going beyond what he could get by listening to the gossip around town. Today, he wanted a paper, and Mr Norrell had been dispatched to fetch it, because Strange was busy.

Mr Norrell, of course, had also been busy, but had Strange asked? He had not. He had retreated of late into the possibility of returning home, and Mr Norrell did not know what to do about it. Arguments were useless, and the Hurtfew library could not reasonably be concealed from him again. All of Mr Norrell's labyrinth spells were well-known to Strange, and he could have broken it in an instant.

At any rate, the paper seemed at least one distraction. Besides, Mr Norrell did not forget that every gentleman needed light exercise to maintain his health.

He moped his way down the street, looking for their usual paper-seller, who tended to lurk in the area where Strange and Norrell had first been brought when they had come here.

William Wood's offices were in sight from here. Mr Norrell glared at them in a perfunctory way, and returned to buying his paper.

As he turned to go, though, something struck him in a flash. It was not tangible; indeed, at first he was scarcely sure what it was. He stopped, frozen to his bones by the intensity of it, yet unable to name it.

Gradually, he realized that it was fairy-magic. He had felt it more often than he could count, but not in England. Not for the span of a hundred years.

He blinked. The paper-seller was asking him if he was all right. He nodded, and hurried back.

Yes...fairy-magic. The smell of green woods and the sound of rushing water, a brief burst like a chorus, discordant and yet beautiful. The chilling feeling of being watched, followed by the sensation of the whole world flickering out like a candle for the merest second. It had all come and gone so fast that he couldn't analyze it while he was feeling it.

What was fairy-magic being practiced here for? William Wood had told them that they weren't using fairies in the war. Were they experimenting without the guidance of Strange himself?

Mr Norrell returned home as fast as he could manage, troubled by what he had felt.

Strange was in the Hurtfew library, surrounded by books. Mr Norrell knew without looking that they would all have something to do with traveling through time, or restoring things to their proper place, or whatever angle Strange had decided it would be best to approach their problem from.

He sighed. It was impossible to talk of problems of today with Strange just at the moment. He tried, nevertheless.

"I felt fairy-magic in front of some Government offices," he ventured.

Strange grunted.

"Do you not find that of some concern?" said Mr Norrell. "We agreed that fairies should not fight in Christian wars."

"We won't be here long," said Strange shortly. "We don't need to worry about the problems of this time. We can prevent them when we return."

"Oh, and how do you propose to do that?"

"We'll find out when we get there."

Mr Norrell crossed his arms. "I have been doing my very best to observe the world around us. I have braved the streets here, which are noisy and smell horrible, wearing clothes that are unfamiliar to me, encountering people who stare at me. Is it too much to ask that you pay attention to my concerns? The very fact of--"

"Stop behaving like a child," Strange snarled, standing and spinning around abruptly. Mr Norrell flinched backward with both the suddenness of the movement and the tone.

"I'm not," he said, his fingers trembling a little as he wrung his hands. "I'm behaving like myself."

"That's bad enough," said Strange. "Can't I rely on you for anything?"

"Rely on _me?_  I am the only one trying to make us comfortable here! I am the only one paying attention to anything that happens here! You're far too busy chasing--" Mr Norrell waved his hands wildly-- "fairy-dreams!"

"My fairy-dreams are going to bring us home," said Strange. "Don't you hate it here? You said yourself how horrible you find everything about this time."

"You misunderstand me. However horrible I may find it, I accept that this is where we find ourselves."

"And if I had accepted that, the curse would still be intact."

"So it would, and I'm not sure it wouldn't have been better that way. There are worse situations than this, Mr Strange."

"I owe Arabella--" Strange began.

"Arabella made a happy life without you!" said Mr Norrell. As soon as he said it, he suspected it was the wrong thing, but it was too late to change his mind, so he plowed forward. "You told me, did you not, that you did not want her to be a widow. You wanted her to be happy. Well, clearly, she has been." He stopped, uncertain of where he intended this speech to go. He wanted to say, _I wouldn't be happy without you_ , and _why can't you forget about her and stay with me_ , but even he knew that Strange would not respond well to this. Besides, he didn't fully understand why he wanted to say any of it, since Strange wasn't proposing to leave him here alone.

He finished, rather weakly, with "Perhaps you ought to do her the same courtesy as she did you, and let her be happy. Have been happy. The grammar of time travel is very trying."

Strange stared at him; he looked as though Mr Norrell had suddenly changed his face and he was trying to rememorize it, turn it into something familiar.

He said, "But she will have lived and died without me."

Mr Norrell shrugged. "Have you considered that those we left behind might be happier without us?"

"But..."

Thinking uncomfortably of Childermass, Mr Norrell said, "We have neither of us, perhaps, been very pleasant to live with at times. So it is with many great men. It may be that it's better for them to have the memory of us, rather than--er--the reality. Here is where we are, and here, I fear, we will stay. So perhaps we had better make the best of it."

"But your clothes, and the noise."

"Both of which I hate, and will continue to hate." Mr Norrell fidgeted a little. "But you are here, too. It's easier to bear, you see."

Strange blinked. Mr Norrell had the sense, from the look on Strange's face, of having said something very profound, something that gave away some vital clue about himself, without having realized it. To silence the feeling, he said "I will still complain, of course."

"Of course," said Strange. His voice was faint and trembled a little. "I would expect no less, sir."

"You are welcome to complain as well," said Mr Norrell, with what he thought of as magnanimity. "There's a good deal for us both to complain about."

Strange ran a hand through his hair and passed it over his eyes. "Thank you," he said, in a tone that Mr Norrell could not identify. It could have been amusement, or could have been sadness -- and that didn't make any sense, for were those not two opposite emotions?

After some deliberation, Mr Norrell patted Strange very carefully on the arm. Strange smiled, sadly, and closed his book.

"Tell me what you saw," he said.

So Mr Norrell told Strange all that he had felt and seen when he had gone to fetch the newspaper.

"I do think it's certainly suspicious," said Strange, growing interested despite himself. "And after all, I suppose if he's up to something he ought not be, we had better stop him. Who else will know enough?"

Mr Norrell agreed with great relief.

It remained, however, to establish precisely what William Wood was doing that involved fairy magic. There were such an endless array of options. Curses? Bargains with the air and the water? God forbid, raising the dead?

They determined that it would be necessary to watch William Wood in a silver basin round the clock in his office to see what mischief he was getting up to. The trouble was that the office was, of course, shielded from scrying.

"It's terribly provoking," said Mr Norrell, "and it won't respond to the countermeasures that I tried after you shielded yourself from me, either."

"Those didn't work, as I recall," said Strange.

Mr Norrell said tartly, "You didn't write yours down, and I don't expect the quality of today's government magicians to be up to your standard of work."

Strange frowned, attempting to work out if that was a compliment. "Nevertheless, the fact remains that we had better find some way of breaking through his barriers. Or I suppose we could go into the office ourselves."

"No, I think that's extremely unwise. He would certainly catch us or detect some sign of us and then we'd lose all of our future chances.

"It might be worth the risk," said Strange. "There might be some token we could take or some sort of apparatus we could leave--"

"No! That would _certainly_ be observed."

"You're far too cautious, you know. We'll never get anything done if we don't take action."

"And we'll never get anything done if we get caught, either."

Strange sighed. "We've known each other thirteen years, and I still don't believe we understand the other's perspective."

Mr Norrell said, "Fifteen. Seven years in the Darkness, remember."

Strange looked as though he was going to argue, and then shook his head. "Well, you're more meticulous about your timekeeping than I am. Fifteen, then. That only serves to highlight my point."

"I suppose we might learn yet."

"After fifteen years," said Strange, and laughed. "One can only hope."

 

So they went back to the books to find some way of coming up with breaking countersurveillance techniques. And while they were at it, to see what kind of fairy magic a modern practitioner might use.

It was slow going at first, since they didn't know which directions to look in. And it was in this manner that Mr Norrell stumbled upon the article. He opened a book on travels to and from fairy in the modern age, and there it was.

"Oh!" said Mr Norrell very quietly, and regretted it immediately.

"What?" cried Strange, turning round in his chair. "Have you found something?"

"Er," said Mr Norrell, "Er, nothing of relevance."

"Come on," said Strange reaching for the book. Mr Norrell whisked it out of his reach.

"Don't be silly, Mr Norrell!" said Strange, rising from his chair and coming around the table. Mr Norrell stuck the book under the table, but Strange's reach was much longer than his and he plucked it firmly from Mr Norrell's grasp. "Come now, let's see what you found."

Mr Norrell didn't want to watch; he knew what would happen. He could see Strange's eyes moving down the pages. He could see Strange's face fall before it actually fell; he was so very familiar with the expression that he knew it was coming as soon as he saw the tiny lines form around the eyes and mouth. He ached badly to look away, but he couldn't.

"I see," said Strange in a low voice.

It was an article about a man from the past, displaced in time. Not them: another man, one from much earlier. He had been in Faerie for some three hundred years by the standards of the Christian realm, and he had emerged in 1893. Two years ago, he had died, despite efforts to send him back to his own time. The research was presented in brief. It had included a very rare passage to investigate method using fairy magic if necessary; despite that, there seemed to be no way to travel backwards in time using magic with current methods.

Every part of Mr Norrell wanted to reach out, to touch and comfort Strange, but of course he couldn't do any such thing. He said, "Jonathan--" very softly and stopped, breath frozen for a moment.

"Mr Strange," he began again. "Perhaps they did not investigate all the potential methods fully. Perhaps they knew less than we do. We, after all, have spent seven years in Faerie."

Somewhat to Mr Norrell's alarm, Strange did not correct him. "And yet, these men know everything there is to know about modern magic, and they say there is no way."

"We could keep looking," said Mr Norrell. "New discoveries are being made every day. Perhaps one day we could find--"

"Come now," said Strange, smiling bitterly, "You told me it was impossible. All the learned gentlemen of today seem to agree with you. I should think you would want to gloat."

"I can't," said Mr Norrell.

"And why not?" said Strange.

"Because you are so fearfully unhappy."

"Why should that trouble you? You've made me unhappy enough in your time."

"I know," said Mr Norrell. He himself was having great difficulty ordering his own thoughts. When Strange had been unhappy because of him, at least it meant Strange had been thinking of him. When _other_ things made Strange unhappy, it was, somehow, different. But that was not quite the point. "I do not want to see you made still more unhappy, after every thing."

Strange laughed his most sarcastic laugh. "I suppose you'd rather I take the news with equanimity? You may have no one you wish to see again in our own time, but we weren't all so isolated from society as you made yourself."

"No," said Mr Norrell. "And you are mistaken in thinking there is _no one_ I wish to see. I merely think it is impossible to achieve and irresponsible to attempt. But I don't expect that to stop you. It never has before. You often achieve the impossible without thinking about it, and you delight in the irresponsible. Perhaps my role is to counter this point in you. To be a check, as it were."

"You're not checking me now. You said _we_ could find, _we_ could look. You've been against this venture from the very start."

"And I still am. It is very unwise. But for you, I would--" Mr Norrell stopped. He didn't know how to end the sentence. It was possible that this _was_ the end of the sentence. Mr Norrell would--anything. Anything Strange liked. Naturally he would voice his objections and attempt to stop Strange, and yet, nevertheless, he would go on. For Strange, Mr Norrell would.

"Why?" said Strange. "I've never known you to do anything for anyone, except yourself, and the cause of English magic."

Mr Norrell felt tongue-tied. He was wholly unable to give an excuse: there was nothing that sounded convincing. _Because we are friends._ No, they had been friends before, and he had not done anything out of his way for Strange then. _Because we are alone here, with no one else to help us._ True, but it had an unsatisfying ring.

_Because I love you, and I have realized that, and I don't know what to do. It was much easier to pretend I didn't. It was much easier to pretend I hated you. It was hardly even pretending at all. But now I can't pretend that, and we have new lives, and here you are and here I am, and I don't want you to be unhappy._

Mr Norrell could not possibly have found the words to express this sentiment aloud even if he wanted to. He cradled his head in his hands; he felt a headache coming on. Strange was still looking at him, and they were still in the midst of work.

But, he found, he could not speak. He could not lift his head, he could not look up. The truth had formed a frozen lump in his throat, and no lie would force itself past. He hated his own heart for betraying him in this way. For making love happen when without it, perhaps, he might have been happy.

"Mr Norrell?" said Strange, reaching out to touch his shoulder. Mr Norrell flinched, and there was, perhaps, something a little telling in that flinch.

"Don't look at me," said Mr Norrell. And this, of course, was the wrong thing to say, for Strange immediately perceived that there was something to see. He must have seen something in Mr Norrell's posture, or the little slice of his face that was still visible, or perhaps he simply thought back over his own experience of love.

"Oh," said Strange.

His hand left Mr Norrell's shoulder, and Mr Norrell squeezed his eyes very hard. He had _known_ this would happen. Of course this would happen. Strange would never go on bestowing his casual little affections to someone who might derive something inappropriate from them.

Mr Norrell said, "I wish you had left me alone. I was quite comfortable never saying a single thing, and then we would both have been happier."

"No, it's not that. Believe me, I don't mind. It's just I've always thought of it as more of a schoolboy aberration--"

Mr Norrell inhaled sharply. He was not sure whether _schoolboy_ or _aberration_ cut deeper. Eyes stinging, he pulled himself in smaller and tried to think of sharp retorts. He thought he might come up with some, if given sufficient time. He thought perhaps this would make him feel better. He could not, he decided, do this with eyes upon him, so he pulled himself up from the chair and slunk away to his bedroom.

He heard Strange say "Sir, wait," but did not heed it.

 

Mr Norrell didn't emerge for dinner, which didn't surprise Strange very much. He had, after all, been embarrassed. This happened often, though perhaps usually not so severely, and Strange was used to the patterns of behavior that generally followed.

But when several more hours passed and he failed to come out for supper, either, Strange began to be annoyed. They had work to do, and it was churlish of Mr Norrell to leave Strange all of it on his own. When midnight came round with still no sign of Mr Norrell, Strange made up his mind to storm the gates.

As he had done many months ago in Faerie, he burst into Mr Norrell's room.

"You're being ridiculous," he said.

Mr Norrell, Strange noted with relief, had not taken to his bed. He was sitting in a corner of his room, reading a book. But the book wasn't relevant to their researches at all, Strange observed with annoyance. It was in fact Strange's own work.

"No, I'm not," said Mr Norrell, and turned back to his book.

Strange found that standing across the room and lecturing Norrell was liable to be unsatisfying, so he marched over and loomed. This, too, was unsatisfying, so he got down on his knees so as to be looking Mr Norrell in the eye. "You're being cowardly," he said.

"I'm not!"

"We have work to do," said Strange, tapping Mr Norrell's knee impatiently. Mr Norrell flinched, which Strange thought precious of him considering how often Strange had done this before. "It'll take both of us to stop him."

"You didn't even care about this before. You didn't want to involve yourself."

"Yes," said Strange impatiently, "but now I'm interested. Come on."

"You're _interested_ ," said Mr Norrell, with considerable sarcasm. "And that is all that matters. What you're interested in. What about Duty?"

"If you like, certainly we have a duty to protect the people of our country."

Mr Norrell heaved a great sigh. "You do not understand at all."

"Well, tell me, then."

"I've told you quite enough, thank you. And must you keep on _looming_ at me like that?"

"I shall go on looming until you come to your senses." Strange scooted himself closer and glared at Mr Norrell.

Mr Norrell reached out and pushed Strange away. He was not a very strong man, but Strange was so surprized that he overbalanced and went backwards onto the carpet.

"Oh dear," said Mr Norrell, "I didn't mean to do that."

"Why did you, then?" said Strange, sitting up.

"Because you're being cruel. You know how I feel about you, and yet you insist upon invading my space and crowding me. You have come into my own bedroom when I clearly wanted to be left alone, and you think of nothing except your own desires. What about me?"

"That's what I mean!" said Strange. "What about _me_? What about my feelings? You didn't bother to ask!"

"What about your feelings? I'm the one in love with you and you dragged it out of me!"

"That's not fair," said Strange, "I didn't drag anything out of you, you were just too obvious for me not to notice."

"Shocking, given how difficult it is to make you notice anything."

"Me? _Me_?" Strange poked Mr Norrell's knee angrily. "You never notice anything outside your books!"

"In that case I would thank you to leave me to them."

"I can't! If you're going to stay in here and sulk, we won't get anything done."

"I think I have a right to sulk for a few days when a secret I've been keeping for some fifteen years has just been revealed wholly without my intention."

"Thirteen," said Strange.

Mr Norrell rose, and walked towards the door. Strange scrambled to his feet and hurried after him. "You can't just avoid me. We live together."

"We have two houses and a flat. In any case I'm sure you can manage to work on the problem by yourself. You're a man of great resourcefulness."

"Don't try to disarm me with compliments," said Strange, angry at himself because he still _did_ thrill to hear that from Mr Norrell.

"I wasn't," said Mr Norrell. He had his hand on the door. Strange tried desperately to think of anything that would keep him from leaving and disappearing into some part of Hurtfew. If he went, he might shield himself from scrying, and then Strange would never find him until he wanted to be found. He could put up a labyrinth if he liked. Perhaps even one Strange couldn't break. And that would be a distraction, one he didn't have time for.

"I don't want you to leave," he said.

It sounded far more plantive than he intended.

"I'm not going anywhere for very long," said Mr Norrell. "Tethered though we no longer are, I would rather not have to navigate society alone."

Strange, with great irritation, wondered why he felt so very warm to hear that. "I know that, but I don't want you to leave now. I don't want you to disappear for three days."

"Why not? It would avoid considerable awkwardness for you, I'm sure. It would give us both time to forget."

"Oh, as though you've ever considered what was less awkward for me," said Strange. "You didn't even ask if I wanted to forget!"

Three seconds of dead silence followed. Strange spent it wondering exactly why he didn't want to forget, for he was sure he didn't. Ego? He didn't think himself such a vain man as that. The background desire to impress Mr Norrell? That didn't make sense; he could, after all, impress him in other ways.

He did not come to any conclusions before Mr Norrell asked: "Don't you?"

"No," said Strange.

"Why not?"

Strange tried out a few replies before he found one he liked. "You didn't ask how I felt about you." He gestured a hand vaguely. "About your feelings."

"I don't see why I should. You made it very clear."

"No, I didn't, I didn't at all." Strange put a hand on his forehead. "Dear god, I am doing all of this wrong."

"Oh, very well," said Mr Norrell. "I will give you the opportunity to insult me again. Mr Strange, how do you feel about me?"

Strange took one of Mr Norrell's hands. He felt he wouldn't quite know what he was feeling until he said it, so he listened very carefully to himself as he spoke. What he said was: "Even when I hated you, I never stopped thinking about you, you know. I tried, but it didn't work."

Mr Norrell's gaze went to their clasped hands, and then to Strange's face, where they stayed. He did not seem to be able to form words; he kept moving as if to speak, and no sound would come out.

"It was very provoking," added Strange.

"But," said Mr Norrell, and then fell silent again.

It would be interesting to know what he said next, Strange thought, and opened his mouth again. It took some time for his brain to summon the words. They must have made a curious picture, two men standing there, holding hands, each attempting and failing to speak. At last, he said, "You have always been English magic, to me. With all that this implies. And you still are. For better or for worse, we are thrice bound together. In magic, in time, and in...affection."

Mr Norrell's face was rather red, and his eyes were rather shining. Strange let his hand go, slowly.

"Now can we get back to work?" he added.

 

At last the succeeded in breaking through William Wood's anti-spying measures. It happened that he had left a little hole in the charm. Living things could go in and out of the room freely; thus, they could not be enchanted not to see what was in front of them, without affecting their memory. It was possible to catch a spider or a fly or a mouse at is went into the building, and see through its eyes. From there, one could direct it into William Wood's office quite nicely.

He must have wondered at the sudden uptick in insects, but despite a high rate of flyswatting, they managed to peer in often enough to see what was going on. Looking through the eyes of a beetle or some other such creature was an extraordinary experience, for it did not look at _all_ like human eyesight did. Nevertheless, they managed to piece together what was happening.

They watched in shifts for several days; William Wood worked late, and tended to do most of his magic in the night. "It must," said Mr Norrell, "have been a very urgent matter, if he was doing magic at quarter to eight when I went to fetch a paper."

"Perhaps he had been up all those hours, trying something new," said Strange.

"Shockingly bad habit," said Mr Norrell meaningfully. "What on earth is attempting to do?"

"Summon a fairy, I think."

Mr Norrell made a lemony sort of face. "That cannot possibly be right. He's weakening barriers - as if he's trying to bring two worlds together in a place, or have a true seeing of another kingdom. Now, to summon a fairy, it is very much better to simply choose an individual and call them by their name the appropriate number of forms, not neglecting, of course, all of the forms which are so important. In the instance of--"

"I doubt very much that he has any name," said Strange, cutting him off, for Mr Norrell could lecture at great length on proper procedures and Strange knew them well himself. "And I doubt he knows the forms, either. Remember, most of the books of magic from the Aureate era vanished some hundred years ago." He cast a significant look around Mr Norrell's library. "And of course summonings are illegal, so all the proper, scholarly information on them will no doubt be very incomplete.I have no doubt that he's doing what I did: attempting to improvise based on what he knows from other, more tangential sources."

"It's extremely inelegant," said Mr Norrell. "No wonder he still hasn't managed. And what do you suppose he'll do once he summons the fairy?"

"Ah!" said Strange. This question he was prepared to answer, as one of his beetles had witnessed William Wood's notes. "He intends to summon an army of fairies in order to press them into service to win the war."

Mr Norrell looked accusingly at Strange. "That's how you knew it was meant to be a summoning! You didn't guess from the spell at all!"

Strange smiled at him, and flung himself down onto the floor beside the sopha. "I never believed that I would say this, but I fear I'm growing too old for this sort of thing."

"Research?" said Mr Norrell, scandalized.

Strange laughed. "Only staying up late into the night to do it. I find I need more sleep than I used to."

Mr Norrell sniffed. "All those years of unwise practices are catching up to you. Perhaps you had better keep to a regular schedule from now on."

Strange leaned back against the couch. To be more precise, he leaned back against Mr Norrell's legs. His head fell back onto Mr Norrell's knees, and his eyes closed.

Mr Norrell felt his own breath catch. He wanted very much to stroke Strange's hair, but he did not quite dare.

"Do you know," said Strange, eyes still closed, "I feel sick of London. Perhaps when we're finished with this we should retire to the country. No more hustle and bustle, no more curious people knocking at our doors when we're in the midst of research. I've still got Ashfair and you've still got Hurtfew. We could divide our time between them. Shropshire in the winter and Yorkshire in the summer."

"The river Hurt is very beautiful in the summer," said Mr Norrell, who had in fact never noticed much about how it looked in any season, but was scrambling for something to say.

"The woods at Ashfair are very beautiful in the winter," said Strange. Mr Norrell didn't think Strange had ever noticed _them_ , either.

"Mr Strange?" he said at last.

"Mmm?"

"You described my....feelings for you as something you had always thought of as a schoolboy aberration."

Strange sat up a little, looking crestfallen. "Yes, that was tactless. I'm sorry. Are you upset?"

"That wasn't what I meant," said Mr Norrell. He wanted to urge Strange's head back down upon his knee, but he was not so bold. Instead, he reached out and began to lightly stroke Strange's hair. This had the desired effect after all, for Strange immediately collapsed back and closed his eyes. "I simply wondered if that implied that, er, as a schoolboy--"

"Oh, of course. I went to a public school, you know. And then of course at university, but that was -- well, we all knew it was temporary. A stopgap, as it were. All very intense at the time, of course, but temporary."

"You never wanted to continue one?"

"Well, I've always been taught to conceptualize love between men as... Purely physical, or purely spiritual, without the melding of the two that can occur between a man and a woman."

Mr Norrell worked up his courage further and began, not simply to stroke, but to run his fingers through Strange's hair. It was much tangled and knotted, for it was not Strange's habit to brush his hair as often as he ought to have these days. Mr Norrell remembered the days when he had kept it perfectly neat, and had been shaven every day, instead of erratically when he felt like it. Perhaps that was under Mrs Strange's influence, or perhaps it was under the influence of his many friends in society. Or perhaps he'd simply lost track of time in the darkness and fallen into new habits.

Mr Norrell decided he liked Strange best exactly how he was. "And now?" he said.

Strange sighed and moved his head a little. "I don't know, I think" he said, "but I do look forward to finding out."

"You could come up on the sopha," said Mr Norrell. His voice sounded surprisingly steady to his own ears. He reached out his hand to help Strange up, and Strange took it with an arch smile. How queer, thought Mr Norrell, that Strange was trembling too.

Mr Norrell feared Strange would move away once he was upon the sopha, but, instead, he lay his head upon Mr Norrell's shoulder.

"You don't mind, do you?" he said. "I'm very tired."

"You should go to sleep earlier," said Mr Norrell, placing a delicate hand upon Strange's knee.

"Ah, ever the voice of reason," said Strange. Despite his claims, he did not close his eyes; he turned his head and looked at Mr Norrell for a long time. Mr Norrell could not speak; his throat was choked with happiness as sharp and bright as winter sunlight. He scarcely dared breathe.

"I suppose we should return to work," said Strange.

Mr Norrell found Strange's hand and laced their fingers, wondering at his own courage.

"It could wait..." said Strange, raising his other hand to touch Mr Norrell's cheek. "We would be the better for a break."

Mr Norrell nodded, and squeezed his hand. Strange smiled, and pressed his cheek very softly against Mr Norrell's. At the moment it was a very scratchy cheek, but Mr Norrell scarcely noticed this. He was far to concerned with the sudden awareness of his own body that was rushing through him, from each point of contact between them: their cheeks, their legs pressed together, their hands. He had never felt so intensely present in himself.

"Just a short one," Strange murmured, and tilted his head just a little, and then their lips were together, and they were kissing, soft as a whisper, gentle as summer rain. Mr Norrell attempted to hold himself perfectly still, but there was no use in it. He flung his arms around Strange, and Strange laughed and kissed him again, and Mr Norrell blessed this time and its horrible clothes and its horrible automobiles and its horrible, wonderful, blessed strangeness, because suddenly he had everything he had ever wanted.

 

Once they had got back to business, they agreed to visit William Wood the next day and stop him if they could. It suited Strange to be getting up to Intrigues again. He hadn't thought of himself as missing it, but one got bored working on the same things day in and day out. He wondered if that would the case when they were living in the country, but he did suspect that he would be able to find some excitement wherever he went. He usually could. And of course they could always visit Faerie again if they liked.

They left the flat near eight in the evening, for, Mr Norrell said, that was when William Wood was most likely to be practicing his summonings. If they could catch him in the act, Strange had a plan that would enable them to dispense with the whole problem quite easily.

Mr Norrell made them blend into the shadows, though at this hour it was hardly necessary. The area was filled with people who looked exactly like them coming home late from work, and if they had been seen, they were two respectable gentlemen who could have easily convinced a duty police officer that they had simply been having a walk before their evening meal. Still, it was better to be inconspicuous; some people still recognized their faces.

Although the locks were, of course, proof against all magic, there were some tricks that Strange had picked up in the Peninsula that still stood him well. Strange had often expressed the view that to focus on magic too much was to miss an obvious practical solution to a problem.

There was a strange noise in the air -- or, perhaps, not a noise but a feeling, or something in between. It was a pressure, a high-pitched hum like a gnat, but coming from everywhere at once.

"It really is terribly inefficient," said Mr Norrell. "Wearing thin the barriers. Ha! It could take him years!"

"I did attempt that on my first try at summoning a fairy, but I thought it would be better to call. I had, of course, raised the dead at that point."

"Well," said Mr Norrell, "I hardly think that this man's talent is equal to yours."

This was so uncharacteristic, and delivered in such a matter of fact tone, that Strange stopped in his tracks for several seconds, but Mr Norrell did not acknowledge that he had delivered a compliment and kept on walking. Strange had to hurry to catch back up.

The building was almost deserted, which was just as well. They made their way up to William Wood's office. The door was locked and, again, proof against all magic but not against all lockpicks. It took Strange some minutes to get it open, however.

"He may be expecting us now," whispered Mr Norrell, "if the noise caught his attention."

Strange nodded and pushed the door open with speed. He tumbled into the office and just had time to notice that there was a magic circle on the floor and candles burning in the four corners. That was new; he must be making progress. He didn't have time to notice more before William Wood attempted to brain him with a large and heavy grimoire, but Mr Norrell said "Oh, dear, do look out," in time for Strange to duck. There was a brief scuffle, but William Wood was not an athletic man. Nor, really, was Strange, but Mr Norrell opened the door to a little maintenance closet, and Strange managed to shove William Wood into it and shut the door. He leant on it heavily.

"Well," he said, "not a moment too soon, it seems."

"I shall dismiss the spell. It'll only take a moment."

Strange thought of Mr Norrell's point about inertia as Mr Norrell rubbed out the chalk circle and blew out the candles. Things want to be where they were before.

The open circle disappeared. That high whining hum that had been bothering Strange since they had come suddenly vanished.

"I think, perhaps, we had better arm ourselves," said Mr Norrell. He looked around and picked up the grimoire. Strange thought he intended to use it as a weapon, but instead he placed it carefully upon the desk and chose a large and heavy paperweight. Strange found a letter-opener, which he thought William Wood really ought to have chosen in the first place.

They opened the closet door.

"What are you doing here?" spluttered William Wood through a thin haze of cobwebs and dust. The closet had apparently not been opened for some time.

"We're here to stop you," said Strange, flourishing the letter-opener.

"By killing me?"

"Don't be silly," said Mr Norrell. "We're only trying to prevent you from making any more unwise decisions. You really can't do things like this. It'll only cause trouble."

"As you know well," said Strange. Mr Norrell glared at him.

"You'll be charged with treason," said William Wood. His face was grey and drawn; Strange recognized this as overwork. "That was the work of two years--two long, hard years. The things I've sacrificed--"

"And did you have official license to experiment with this?" interrupted Strange.

William Wood said, "If they knew--"

"It's a very dangerous form of magic, Mr Wood," said Mr Norrell. "The damage that you could have done to yourself, and indeed to the nation as a whole, is immeasurable. Fairy-bargains are never what they seem."

"To say nothing of the ethical concerns," said Strange.

"It would have ended the war!" said William Wood.

"A worthy goal, certainly, but probably not one that you could have accomplished this way." Strange sighed. "I'm afraid fairy-magic is best left to the individual, _for_ the individual, if it is to be used. We are none of us the Raven King."

"To hear you admit that," began Mr Norrell, but Strange gave him a glance that said _not now._  He concluded instead..."is quite correct, of course. Mr Wood, really."

"Neither of you are up to date on the latest theories."

"We've _been in Faerie_ for seven years," said Strange. "Believe me when I say this is the one area of magic we are, in fact, equipped to deal with. Well, I'll offer you a bargain. Mr Norrell and I will retire to our houses in the country and stay out of your way, and incidentally not report the dangerous experiments you've been doing, if you'll agree to stop doing them. We will do our own research, such as it may be, towards assisting with the war effort and keeping the nation safe. In return, _you_ will not try to have us convicted for treason, although in any case how you'd manage that without revealing your own illegal activities is a bit of a mystery, so I think you're getting the better end of it."

"How can you be sure I won't continue as soon as you leave?"

"We'll put a sort of...hmmm....shall we call it a trace, Mr Norrell?"

Mr Norrell said, "We can cast a spell that will detect any fairy-magic in your vicinity and show us what you are doing."

William Wood's face, greyer than ever now, crumpled a little. He said, "I accept the bargain."

"Good." Strange rubbed his hands. "Come, then, Mr Norrell."

They cast the spell.

"I do wish you luck in ending the war," said Strange. "Only I don't think you ought to bargain away the freedom of every Englishman on the island in the process. It will come to that, I assure you. Bargains with fairies always have costs."

"Come, Mr Strange," said Mr Norrell, "We are late for our supper."

 

On the way back home, Mr Norrell said, "You said seven."

"I beg your pardon?" said Strange.

"When you told him how long we had been in Faerie, you said seven."

"Oh, well," said Strange. "It did sound more impressive, didn't it?"

And he smiled at Mr Norrell.

"I think I'll enjoy going back to the country with you," said Mr Norrell. "Particularly if you have learned to admit I'm right."

"Now, now, you can't have it _all_ your own way," said Strange, as they entered the flat, and took Mr Norrell's hand.


End file.
